The first thing that caught my attention was the way the light from the setting sun was reflecting on the glass of my apartment window.
It had been one of those exhausting, nerve-wracking days, when the city felt like a relentless machine crushing me and throwing me away. My laptop was still open on the kitchen counter, an unfinished email glowing faintly on the screen, while I stood by the window with the phone pressed to my ear. Outside, the Boston skyline stood out clearly against a sky tinged with orange and pink. In that brief moment of quiet, the voice I least wanted to hear broke the silence with cold satisfaction.
“You are banned from the family beach house forever.”
The words came from Diana Crawford, my stepmother, and they echoed through the speaker with a cutting, almost smug cruelty that made me tighten my grip on the phone. I stared at my reflection in the glass: dark hair pulled back in a loose, messy bun, my sweater slipping off one shoulder, while the distant hum of traffic rose from the street below.
“What?” I asked slowly.
"I changed all the locks," he continued, enunciating each word as if savoring it. "Don't even think about trying to get in. This is what you get for ruining your sister's graduation party."
A soft laugh almost escaped me. “You mean the party I was never invited to?” I asked calmly.
She let out an exaggerated, contemptuous laugh. “Oh, please, don't start playing the victim.”
"The same party you told everyone I was too busy to go to?" I replied, keeping my voice calm. Years earlier, I'd learned that showing anger at Diana only fueled it, because she interpreted every emotional reaction as a victory.
His laughter crackled through the line. “Everyone knows you’re jealous of Madeline and her success,” he said with a superior air. “You’ll never set foot in that beach house again. I made sure of that.”
Jealousy had always been her favorite accusation. It had surfaced the moment she married my father and entered our lives, and she used it whenever she wanted to distort the truth to portray herself as innocent.
In the reflection of the glass, the image of the beach house seemed to overlap with the city skyline. The wide porch. The pale railing, smoothed by countless hands. The endless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean shimmering beyond the dunes.
My mother's laughter came back to me like a light, warm breeze.
“Look at that wave, Rebecca. I swear it's bigger than you were when you were five.”
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